


The Tips Of Her Wings

by peacock_butterfly



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Female Character of Color, Paragon Shepard (Mass Effect), Post-Mass Effect 2, Pre-Mass Effect 3, Side Quests, Vanguard (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:29:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24646450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacock_butterfly/pseuds/peacock_butterfly
Summary: Previously posted in ~2014/15 under my former AO3 account rathrunpredictabl - new updated edition forthcoming*It wasn't that Thane couldn't handle these inexperienced idiots by himself. It's just that she preferred not to let him, on principle.An attempt at a desert vacation on Rakhana goes awry when mercenaries intervene with rifles. Typical, thinks Shepard and immediately heads back out to confront their leader. Another firefight later, it becomes clear this is no simple opportunistic ambush. Someone set them up. This is a longer game.Across desert sands, a claustrophobic freighter, a mercenary base, a mining station and a domed city, Shepard and the remaining crew will face heavy mechs, disguises, sword fights, card games, chases, betrayals and escapes in their quest to find out who sent the mercenaries and to put a stop to them.But the trail winds through some dark, forgotten places, and both Shepard and Thane will have to face memories they thought they had buried deep inside them...(Post ME-2, post-Arrival DLC; pre ME-3)
Relationships: Thane Krios/Female Shepard
Comments: 7
Kudos: 3





	1. Prologue: Tears

  
_As a flood descending upon those foreign lands, powerful one of heaven and earth, you are their Inana._

* * *

  
'I consider my body's death and a chill settles in my gut... I am afraid, and it shames me—'

The drell's skin was composed of fine, smooth scales. As she slid her hand over his she felt the dense muscle shift as his fist tightened with the effort of controlling himself. The pools of his eyes were not so contained.

'Thane...' 

He looked up, shoulders heavy with the weight of staring too many truths in the face. She wondered how long he had sat completely still in Life Support, before coming to her. She wondered how many memories of Irikah he had relived. She wondered if he had relived any recent events involving her. She certainly had: she had read the beginning of the same file three times before he'd come in. She hadn't really believed he'd come. And now...

_I've never felt affection for another species..._

The fishtank glowed over them; walls of metal and plastic. For once, her ability to talk her way out of any situation would not work here. There was nothing left to say. The assassin knew every detail of the impossible situation they had slipped into: there was no other side of it she could show to him. Hell, maybe there wouldn't be another side. The one-way trip of the mission was just beginning, but it had already begun for him. For them. There was only one comfort left to give, one last frontier to cross.

She lifted her hand to him and this time he did not flinch away. Her palm, toughened by training and firearms, brushed his cheek and her fingertips touched the velvety red ruff on his neck. The tears prickled. Her skin looked even darker compared to his sleek greenness. God but he was warm. Burning. The desert sun forever setting, the smell of spices forever strong, and still he had come to her. A warmth of her own settled in her stomach. 

She'd already made the tactical decision to invite him to stay a while, in view of his distress, but now it was a decision she made with the whole of her body. What to say in this vital moment?

'Be alive with me, tonight.'

 _Fuck_. She winced inwardly. Nice, Shep, make an oblique reference to his murdered wife and his own terminal illness. His mouth opened, presumably to protest, either at the action or her ill-formed advance, and she snapped: she unleashed weeks of sexual tension to forestall the moment and went for it and just fucking kissed him. 

'Mmmhn...' 

His lips were dry, soft, smooth, and after a fraction of a second's shock he drank like a man dying of thirst. The musty, bitter taste of his tongue in her mouth... Her hands skimmed over the contours of his head and neck; his rested on her waist. Her body responded with softness and a shiver. _My god... All our gods... I had no idea how much I wanted this..._

Presently she pulled herself away and examined him. This close she could feel him breathing, feel the muscles tug and pull air into his ruined lungs. She glanced down at the long, lithe body she held in her hands and wondering how to undress him without making a further fool of herself. 

He blinked horizontally, releasing two more tears. She pushed them away with her thumbs, astonished still by the warm, firm smoothness of his scales. 'It's okay to be afraid, Thane. I sure as hell am. It's how I know I've not gone crazy. Yet.'

At last, it happened. He smiled, and a sighing half-laugh of a breath fell down over her shoulder. 'Hhhh.'

She smiled back tentatively. 'I don't suppose there's any chance you'll forget the first thing I said?'

He knew what she meant. He always did. 'Clumsy as it was, I would not want to.'

'Awh.' Shepard slid her hands beneath the shoulders of his coat and shifted. 'Well never mind. I'm gonna make damn sure you remember this...'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All chapter heading quotations are from _The exaltation of Inana_ , by En-hedu-ana - the first known human being to put a name to a text: a Sumerian priestess from present-day Iraq, writing 4300 years ago in praise of Inana, goddess of sex, war, justice, and power. In mythology, Inana was believed to have stolen the ‘mes’ representing all positive and negative aspects of civilisation. She was struck dead in the Underworld after being found guilty of hubris and was returned to life by the god of wisdom.
> 
> This story was conceived listening to Audra May's song "Bandida" while scuffing my toes in the sand at the height of summer in Lyon, France, in 2014: 
> 
> "No mercy have I for men,  
> No god can save my soul,  
> It's love and life I fight for,  
> With blade and gun in tow.
> 
> My darling, please forgive me,  
> I'm feared in every town.  
> I'm stopless now to save you,  
> the Bandida's coming round. 
> 
> What would I do to find you?  
> I'll cloak my face and hide.  
> I'll veil myself in black and steel,  
> and battle at your side."


	2. Dust

_True goddess fit for divine powers, your splendid utterances are magnificent. Deep-hearted, good woman with a radiant heart, I will enumerate your divine powers for you!_

* * *

_Some weeks later..._

Shepard stepped down out of the shuttle and wished, not for the first time, that she could have kept the Mako. The desert sand swept away from the landing pad in huge, inviting peaks of red-gold, waiting to be conquered. The heat, kept at bay by the climate control of her armour, began to creep into her awareness. She crouched down and let a handful of fine sand run through her glove.

Before her, beyond the cracked but serviceable landing pad, the sand-scraped ruins of a city slept in the heat. Erosion had eased the sharp edges of decay into smooth contours. The ruins stretched out down a deep valley of rock and sand, held at bay by thick bracing walls at the edges. In the distance, the dark smudges of cliffs blurred with the heat haze.

Shepard trotted down some steps to a viewpoint set into the bedrock. The railing had long since fallen to the shifting sand, but the platform felt solid enough. She raised her visor and coughed at the thickness of the air. It was like being in a sauna. A gust of hot wind caused handfuls of sand to whip up and rattle away down the dune; abruptly the air current changed and blew some of it back into her face. Shepard gagged and blinked and spat out the desert.

'It would be best if you were to isolate yourself from this environment, Siha.'

She closed her visor up as the drell spoke, and straightened. She still found it irritating to have to communicate through comms when standing right next to someone. Particularly this someone. 'Does the wind always have it in for you?'

'Not always. As well as dust, it brings smells, of water, food, company. This time...' He inhaled. '… Nothing but warmth and silence.'

Thane had his eyes closed, but only horizontally: the transparent film kept out the worst of the sand until the wind subsided. He blinked both ways and came and stood very close to her, staring out over the city.

'I can't help but think this might have been us,' mused Shepard. '11 billion people, heavily industrialised, dwindling natural resources... Do you ever think about them?'

'It is tradition for drell on Kahje to return to the homeworld on pilgrimage, at least once in their lifetime. To pray for those who did not survive, and remember.'

'I thought you said most people didn't believe in the old gods any more.'

'They don't. But they return to pray all the same.' He paused. ' _The dust is everywhere, in all the pieces of my clothes. Dry and warm; breathable. The pilgrimage leader sets the orb on the top of the stand and the sun burns through it into our eyes. Everyone can feel the heat. The pilgrim next to me falls to her knees in the dust._ '

Shepard took his hand. 'Sounds powerful.'

Thane blew out a breath in a quiet hissing noise and gripped her hand. 'Yes.'

She waited a moment while he anchored himself in the present again, then tugged him. 'Come on. Let's explore.'

'The entire planet was picked clean by pockets of survivors, Siha. There will be little to scavenge.'

'I still want to look it over. Come on.'

Two lifetimes worth of training dictated she jog all the way down the steps leading into the city, and automatically pick out spots of cover. Behind her she knew the assassin, just as automatically, was scouting vantage points. The first few blocks were, as he had said, picked clean. Empty warehouses yawned at the golden heat of the street. After a crossroads she dived down the shade of an alley, and went boldly through a doorway covered by a scrap of greasy cloth.

With the abrupt change in light levels, the thing on the floor in the little room caught her by surprise, and she was aglow with biotic energy before she had a chance to examine it properly. 'What's that?'

The drell slipped in behind her. 'A relic.'

Shepard relaxed her concentration as he knelt and collected the thing up into his arms. The figurine was smoothed of detail and battered by the environment, but the polished metal still shone. It was a large-eyed female figure with many arms and a thin, coiling tail. Two hands held a child, one a bow, one a knife, and another set held two wide flowers up high. Six glorious dragonfly-like wings splayed out from the figure's spine.

' _Illium sunset pours molten through the window behind. Drop. Take out the guards, flip the asari around, one quick shot to the stomach. Shock and pain. Twitching and bleeding. I close the asari's eyes and let her down gently onto the console to die. Fold her arms. Clasp hands to pray. Close my eyes fully but the black stare of the dark-skinned human follows me into the prayer and for the first time in ten years I cannot concentrate._ '

Shepard shivered despite the heat. But touched as she was, she wasn't going to encourage Thane to dwell any more than he already did. He stood up and replaced the figurine on the little stone ledge in the wall from which it had fallen. He joined his hands. Shepard wondered briefly whether to leave him to it or to step closer.

She joined him and waited, clasping her hands in front of her. The aural receptors in her helmet picked up the sound of his breathing, silent in, mild hiss out... In, out, in, out, then a tight little rattling sound that sent adrenaline and fear shooting through her Cerberus-enhanced system. She wanted to punch something. Glancing back at the figurine, holding life and death in its many hands, Shepard felt herself reaching out with her mind instead.

'Thank you for staying,' he said presently, lowering his hands.

'You're right. There is something about this place that makes you think. Kind of... stretch.'

'I am glad you feel it too, Siha.'

'Do all your angels have insect wings?'

'Yes.'

They went out into the alley again and walked its length. Another street brought them to a wide open space, where the sand had rubbed away the mosaic pattern on the floor and the desert had long since claimed the booths. 'A market square,' supplied Thane, stepping out into the open space and turning around to take it in. 'I feel... strange. This is a place that should be crowded with memories, but this is the first time I have been here. I feel connected but very distant at the same time.'

'I suppose that's the feeling of pilgrimage.'

'That is a good way of thinking of it.'

The wind roared again, tumbling streams of sand and grit down the street they had just come from and sending it cascading across the empty square. 'Good thing the drell don't have ancestral memories as good as their own,' commented Shepard, forcing her way through the blast of wind. 'You'd have drowned by now. When did you last come back to Rakh–'

She was only able to consciously sort through the events that followed thirty seconds later, sheltering behind a pillar. Something metallic had glinted at the top of a ruin to their right; firing up her implants she'd Charged Thane to the ground, sending them both skidding a good few metres, just as the dust where he had stood exploded into pieces of grit and shattered stone. Gripping one another's arm, they stormed across the gaping open space in a hail of bullets and dived for cover. Shepard checked her radar while she waited for her shields to recover. 'Three on our left, one opposite. Low heat emissions. Probably pirates or mercs with radiation shielding. Is this building solid?'

'Cover me.' He poked his head out to check. Shepard let off a blast from her Eviscerator, but the distance was too great to do any real damage and the target only took one or two hits to its armour. Thane ducked again and nodded. 'Seems solid.'

'Get up in there and pick them off. I'll distract them from down here. Good hunting.'

He nodded, sent off a quick prayer, then wheeled and hauled himself up the open staircase. Shepard popped her head out again just in time to empty the clip of her shotgun into the merc who was trying to charge up on her; he crumpled with a short grunt. She ejected the heat sink just in time to see movement at the end of the row of pillars. She blew out a breath to focus herself, launched off the pillar, and Charged again. Her target, a human dressed in Blue Suns uniform, dropped like a sack of iridium and was quickly put out of his misery with another blast. Shepard kicked him over with her boot and crouched again. She flicked through open comm channels but the mercs were being unusually quiet. The first twinges of a headache began to gnaw at her consciousness.

The crack of a sniper rifle boomed around the square, and rifles crackled above her. Another dot disappeared from her scanner. Two left. She needed a better position. There was a ruined booth out in the open that she judged would shelter her for a little while.

Such a blatant run did, as she'd hoped, draw their attention, and she heard the sickening cracking sound of her shield shattering as she vaulted the ruined booth and ducked. Another boom echoed overhead, and a second red dot vanished from her radar. Return fire sparked in the heat, and she heard Thane grunt over the comm.

Rage unfolded its wings within her. Smoothly she holstered her gun and unfolded the missile launcher. She forced herself to wait another second to throw up a Barrier, then stood up. Bullets poured into her defences as she calmly took aim, adjusted for wind and muscle shift, and launched a seeker. She looked up from the scope and watched through the bullets as the missile screamed across the marketplace and exploded into the rooftop, sending the hapless merc spread-eagled and very dead over the side. His corpse dropped into the dust with a revolting crunch.

Shepard breathed again and crouched, checking the radar. 'Anything left up there?'

'That's the last of them.'

'Stay there, I'll come to you. I swear Thane, one day, one day, I'll be able to take shore leave without someone trying to kill me.'

'…I suspect they came for me.'


	3. Ghosts

_Be it known that you roar at the foreign lands! Be it known that you crush heads!_

* * *

Shepard emerged at the top of the stairs and sprinted across the roof. Up here the sun was blinding, and her suit automatically compensated by shading her visor. A low wall ran all the way around the rooftop, and she crouched next to Thane. The assassin looked up from his prayer. 'We were foolish to be caught in the open.'

'Agreed. Next time we go on vacation we'll go expecting to be shot.'

'You are the one who insisted we go armed. There are thermal clips and equipment on the other roof. Wait,' he added as Shepard moved to stand. He raised the rifle and scanned the square of buildings through the scope. 'There's a plank bridge to our left. Wait.' He tensed, perfectly still. His lips moved. The crack of the gun punched again through the silence, and through the head of a mercenary sniper in the ruins to their right. The echoes faded; the body flopped awkwardly out of the window and began to bleed down the wall. Thane winced as he ejected the clip.

'Shot,' praised Shepard. 'Hmm. This heat isn't helping the sensors.'

'Check the other roof for clips and salvage, Siha. I will clean up.'

Shepard stood warily. That sort of slip could easily have been the death of them. The assassin collapsed the rifle and stowed it and moved off to the staircase with his Tempest in his hand. Apart from his receding footsteps, the ruined city slept once more under its last dust, still and heavy like a corpse. She jogged over to the plank and wobbled across, jumping down with a scrunching sound as her boots hit the grit. Parts of this building had already fallen in: gaping holes in the roof material revealed the innards of the place. Impossible to guess the function with this much decay and erosion. She'd have to be careful where she stood. The sun flared in her visor.

They had been stupid, yes, standing around in the open on a strange planet. Her feelings had got in the way of reflexive and basic safety. She was a dangerous person to know. The important thing was that they had survived, again. Scanning the two corpses left up here revealed little usable tech. Looked like another human and a turian, these two shot cleanly in the head. Little suffering. The merc she had hit with the missile had had a much rockier ride into death than these two. A trickle of guilt at the overkill threatened to enter her soul, and she stemmed it quickly. When their bodies were recovered they would send a warning to others, of what happens when you attempt to kill Commander Shepard. Or more accurately, what happens when you try to kill Commander Shepard's lover. That was a disturbing thought, even though of course a freelance assassin would make enemies of his own. Flies were swarming over the corpses. Shepard swatted them away and retrieved a datapad from the turian's utility belt. 

Hacking always tried her patience. She had just figured out the correct codes when Thane reappeared, but went past her. In the corner of her vision, he calmly rearranged the bodies, arms crossed and helmets straightened. He remained still in prayer as she pawed through the files on the datapad. 

'These guys sent off a transmission about ten minutes ago.'

'Presumably to their employer.'

'I'll wing it over to EDI. She should be able to figure out where it went.' She uploaded the data to her faithful omni-tool and sent the message. In doing so she looked up and faced out over the square from the south side. The blood-stained empty window lay opposite. 'If those mercs ratted us out, this vacation just got a lot more complicated.'

'Something is not right,' murmured the drell, kneeling down and touching the sightless visor of the human corpse. 'These mercenaries were inexperienced; easily distracted. In all modesty, sending them after me was suicide. They can only be pawns in a greater game.'

Shepard gestured with the datapad. 'This data should solve the problem. All we have to do is pay the recipient a visit and tell them to stop trying to kill us.'

'Somehow I doubt it will be that simple.'

'When is it ever.' Shepard swatted again at the flies and dropped the datapad in the dust. 'Let's get down from here.'

The velvety voice of the ship's AI beamed through their comms on the way down the crumbling staircase. 'Shepard, the destination coordinates are heavily encrypted and it will take me some time to decipher them. Also, I have located two abandoned desert skiffs just outside the settlement. Transmitting coordinates.'

'Mind if we check those out before we go?' asked Shepard.

'Not at all.'

They exited the square through a building, and started down the street. Following EDI's directions led them south, encouraged along by violent blasts of wind that sent dust and grit streaming past them. The air thickened, reddish and powdery. Shepard's suit had been switched to life support mode for a good five minutes before she realised and isolated the problem. 'Hold up a sec. My breathing filter's blocked. Needs changing.'

'We should shelter you from the wind. Here.' Thane kicked out a door, checked the room inside, and motioned her in. This room had once been a store of some sort, long since looted and scrubbed clean by the sands. 

Shepard unlocked the seals and pulled off her helmet, exclaiming aloud. A trickle of dust fell from her collar. Inside they were out of the wind, but the heat was intense and heavy and stifling. Her body, faced with cooled limbs and overheating head, began to panic, and her heart rate jumped up. She coughed, throat already irritated by the dust. Her breathing grated in her ears. Come on, focus. Quickly, she flipped the catches and drew out the filter in the mouthpiece; Thane caught the helmet as it fell from her hands. Shepard tossed the filter aside and fumbled in her utility belt for a spare. Every in-breath was sharp and strained, horribly loud in the quiet heat. Her vision was beginning to prickle at the edges. Finally she found the piece of treated foam and jammed it into place, Thane holding the helmet steady. She crammed it back onto her head, her heart blasting starved blood round and round her body. The seal fizzed but held, and a second later cool, clear air flooded her face. She coughed out the dust, and while she recovered she became aware that Thane had fastened the manual clips on her helmet and had his hand on her shoulder. 

'Your species adapted to this?' she panted. 'No wonder the hanar homeworld causes problems. How are you doing, by the way?'

'My condition is irreversible, but I feel better for having once more breathed the desert. You I think feel worse.'

'Yeah. My life support had switched itself on when my filter died. Planets like this are why Cerberus should have let me keep the Mako.'

'But you still want to find the skiffs?'

'We find those, we'll have more information about who's hunting us. Or parts to sell. Both, ideally. Come on.'

They moved through the streets in silence, alert for other hostiles that might slip past their sensors. The street broadened and ran directly out of the city, and apart from the blasting wind nothing else moved. Shepard's unease grew. She knew she'd feel better when they had enough details for her to compile it into an assignment for herself. 

The cover ran out as they neared the edge of the town, where the houses and buildings dribbled out into the sand and rock with no clear pattern or order. 

_'Looking out over the city as the shuttle pulls away. The history of my species fades into the dust. Scattered ruins trickle out into rock and aridity and forgetting. Too soon the dark ocean of space returns and the planet shrinks into the deep.'_

Shepard stopped while he recovered himself. The drell had been reliving memories much more frequently since the suicide mission. She of all people on board knew most accurately why, but the knowledge did not make it any easier to witness.

'Siha...'

'I'm here.'

'Let us find the skiffs and go. This ruin is... conflicting.'

'Not a problem. Let's move out.'

Tucked inconspicuously into the outer wall of the ghost town, the skiffs were already coated in grit. The log confirmed they'd been hired by one Lieutenant Ation from a survivor settlement a few klicks away, called Ir'tasaha. Shepard showed the data pad to Thane. 'That’s the guy. Do you think we killed him back there, or will he be waiting for us up ahead?'

'No lieutenant, not even a mercenary, would put three of his men on the same side of a quadrangle, as well-placed as they were. He will be waiting for us. I think he will expect us to track him down.'

'They messed with my master assassin, of course we're going to hunt him down. But we should head back to the ship and take a breather first. I want to follow this through with a strike team to be sure. And I need a shower.'

'Of course.'

'Let me just transmit this... EDI, more data coming your way.'

'Standing by, Shepard... Upload complete.'

Shepard deactivated her omni-tool and put her foot up on the side of one skiff. Time for some distraction. 'Can you drive one of these?'

Thane ran a hand over the controls thoughtfully. 'In theory it's just another mass-effect drive based vehicle. I believe I could pilot it, though I doubt Joker would want to watch. …Siha?'

'I want to find out if you can pilot this thing.'

'The best place to discover that would be from a safe distance, not from the front of the vehicle.'

'The back seat doesn't suit me. Get in here, fire her up, and take us back to the shuttle. Don't make me make that an order,' she added, as Thane hesitated. 

He climbed in beside her, shaking his head in disbelief. 'I hope you have a barrier in place.'

'What's life without a little danger? Take us out.'

*


	4. Choices

_Their great gateways are set afire. Blood is poured into their rivers because of you, and their people must drink it._

* * *

Back on board the Normandy, Shepard's headache had come out with force, pounding on her skull with the effort of L-5 biotics and the harsh atmosphere of Rakhana. She'd got herself through the debriefing and had outlined what had happened, then announced she needed to rest up before following through. Tali'Zorah had suggested out loud what most of the crew were thinking and asked if Shepard didn't want to see Dr Chakwas. 

'I'll be fine, Tali, it's just a headache and a lungful of dust. I could use a shower though. Dismissed. I'll call on you all later.'

Thane left stoically with the rest, though Garrus hesitated and glanced back at her at the door. Shepard paused a while to wait for the path to the elevator to clear, then headed up to the loft.

The sterile water from the shower steamed around her reconstituted body, slipping down new scars and enhanced muscle. She didn’t feel quite 100% present in her body. Spectre was a word for ghost, after all. Except this ghost wasn't afraid to punch people or throw them across rooms or send a biotic shockwave through an explosive container. She rubbed the desert off of herself and watched the sand bead around the plughole. Even insulated in her suit she'd still somehow accumulated the stuff. The steam felt good to breathe, and her headache began to ease up.

She emerged from the bathroom and pulled on a jumpsuit. Her armour lay in pieces on the floor where she had discarded it without thinking. She gathered the sections and settled down with her repair kit to cleaning the grit out of it. Cross-legged on the floor, with low, heartbeat-like music in the background, she slipped into a gloriously empty trance. For a few blissful moments, her mind was totally occupied with the mechanical problems of removing each grain of sand.

It couldn't last, of course. Grains of sand inevitably led her mind to time, and the handful of desert she had let run through her glove on Rakhana. Civilisations that had escaped industrialisation reportedly still used such primitive devices to keep track of time. Early humans had used them too.

She could feel a brooding mood at the back of her mind, looming like grey clouds over a summer's day. The question now was which one of them would break first, and seek the other out.

Shepard had made a bargain with herself to at least finish this task and then see how she felt, and it was with intense relief that she heard the door open to the one other handprint that was set to activate it. He came in and waited for the door to shut, then picked his way over the floor and sat on the bed. They sat in silence while she finished, and stowed the pieces in the locker. Then she came and sat next to him. 

They twisted into one another and fell backwards, he below wrapping his arms around her, she above pressing her lips into his left frill. For a few more precious moments their contact kept the universe at bay. Shepard reached out and hit the dimmer, and the music stopped and the lights went out. Only the fish tank glowed, oozing blue light into the cabin. The drell's eyes absorbed the dim light; this close she could make out his deep green irises, and beyond that the deep dark pupil, and therein the minute reflection of herself, just as deep and dark. 

'So,' she breathed. 'Turns out you can pilot a skiff.'

He'd locked her in his arms, strength carefully moderated not to crush her, but to hold her close to him. Warmth seeped through her clothing. Any closer and she would pass right through him. There was an infuriating few layers of fabric in the way first. She wriggled in his arms until he loosened his grip, and began to undo his jacket. His hands went up and his fingers went into her hair as she worked.

'How is your headache?'

'Better. I'm thinking I should do something with my hair. Shave it. Trim it. Maybe braid it.'

They sat up and he pulled himself out of his sleeves. His torso drew her hands like magnets. Every time this happened she couldn't stop herself from touching the sleek greenish scales, the dense muscle, the little ridges of old wounds. He lay back, nose flaring with a gentle hiss, and pulled gently at her zip. She released herself from the top of the jumpsuit and folded down onto him, chest to chest, lung to lung. His arms enveloped her again and he buried his face in her hair. 

'My Siha. What is it? Let me share the weight of your soul and make you Whole once more.'

‘I can’t stop thinking about the Alpha relay,’ she said quietly, pressed against him. She felt him inhale and his grip tightened. ‘I know I had no choice. I had to. If I hadn’t we’d all be dead already. But… so many people still died, because of something I did.’

‘Our judgement is never complete. We can only make the best decisions with the information we have at the time. And sometimes, we have little to no control at all. You must not blame yourself for the paths of bullets you did not fire.' 

‘Even when the bullet is an asteroid?’

‘Did you fire it?’

‘… No I didn’t. But I didn’t stop it.’

‘Entropy always wins.’ He gripped her tight, in the present, in the warmth and the darkness. When he spoke again it was involuntary and transparent.

_'Impossibly the figurine resembles her. Tidy the shrine and pay my respects and she is there beside me in silence, I feel her reaching out, I can almost see the tips of her wings.'_

She pressed back harder, gripping him almost as tightly as he held her.

*


	5. Pressure

_But my own trial is not yet concluded, although a hostile verdict encloses me as if it were my own verdict. I did not reach out my hands to the flowered bed._

* * *

She awoke alone with a start some hours later. In the glow from the fishtank she could make out his discarded jacket on the bedcovers. His side of the bed was still warm. She sat up, squinting, and made out that the bathroom door was closed. This would be a good opportunity to top up the layer of ointment that eased the irritation skin-to-skin contact usually caused. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and found the little tube on the nightstand. 

She was twisting awkwardly to get to the areas on her back when the coughing began. The tube dropped from her fingers; she pushed off the bed and crossed the room in a bound. From the first short, barking sounds, the coughing had increased in thickness and ferocity. She smeared the remains of the cream on her stomach and hurried to palm the door. It slid coolly open to reveal the drell hunched over the sink with one hand on the mirror and the other bracing his chest. Shepard became aware of every centimetre of her exposed skin as the blood drained from it, and a chill settled on her like snow. Between coughing his breathing was tight and strained. She stepped in behind him and put her hand on his back. 

Finally he retched and spat and quickly ran the water to clear the red from the basin. He braced himself with both arms on the sink and hung his head. 'Uggh.'

Shepard discovered words had failed her. She knew the illness was in his lungs but she'd never witnessed the effects first-hand. From his reluctance to meet her eyes in the mirror, it seemed he'd never intended her to. Her heart was pounding with fear-fuelled adrenaline. Soundlessly she moved forwards and put her arms around him from behind, pressing herself close, hoping to force out the despair with warmth. She could feel the thundering of his heart. In the mirror, her dark arms painted two strong, protecting lines across his bare chest.

'I never wished you to see me like this,' he said hoarsely.

'I'm not gonna let you suffer alone, Thane,' she murmured. 'Not any more.'

'The memories will haunt you.'

'True. But you'll remember I was there.' She squeezed him, and pressed her lips to the back of his neck. 'You'll remember this...' She adjusted her grip and turned her arms, holding his shoulders from the front and craning her head to kiss the velvety fringe of red skin on his cheek, '… and this...' 

She turned him in her arms, and he followed her lead without protest. She brought her hands up and passed her thumbs over his cheeks, splaying her fingers over the fringes and holding his gaze steady. 

'… and this...' And she kissed him. 

*


	6. Division

_Be it known that you have flashing eyes! Be it known that you are unshakeable and unyielding! Be it known that you always stand triumphant!_

* * *

__

_I spend the rest of the night cycle curled against her. Her black skin glows in the light; draws me like a magnet. I could never lose her to the darkness. I wake once and watch her sleep, soundless and still, but as soon as I shift too far she half-wakes and pulls me around her again. Lightly, mindful of the dermatological irritation my touch causes, I let my fingers trail over her round face, her flat nose and full lips, and the dark oceans of her eyes now covered by fringed eyelids. Sleep is the one thing all species in the galaxy have in common._

_Later. She calls us all to the briefing room and reminds everyone about the troubles we'd encountered on Rakhana, and describes the assignment she has worked out. Tali volunteers to come with us once more to the surface. We split to prepare; I return to Life Support, to give myself a shot of antibiotics, to pray and meditate, and to imagine her piecing together her battered black armour. I have not found much attention to pay to my gods recently, and it bothers me._

_The shuttle ride down is uneventful. The quarian stares out at the sand as we power through the glorious heat and land on another pad, just outside the settlement of Ir'tasaha, a desert rose of circling buildings and thick rock. We disembark into the dust and follow the commander down the ramp and across the primitive port. The sun is setting, taking the temperature with it. I breathe the desert once more and feel the tightness in me loosen a little._

_Drell emerge from buildings as we pass and stare at us. I glance back to see some trailing us a little way in curiosity. Some twitch as memories of other off-worlders invade them for a moment. Only one is consumed by her memory to the point of reciting it aloud. Do I really have so little self-control?_

_The dust we are kicking up begins to hang in the air; Tali'Zorah swats her hand in front of her visor to no avail. 'Where is this skiff place, Shepard? If we don't find it soon we'll be walking blind.'_

_'Over here.'_

_We follow her through a square, she taking care to stick to the edges. I notice Tali has a drone on her omni-tool. I've already checked the vantage points I can see, and note that if we are to be attacked, it will be through an access passage on the opposite side of the square. The wind picks up and pulls sheets of sand into the air._

_We pass through a modern door into a maintained building, the skiff hire place. The commander begins negotiating with the drell behind the booth, who keeps glancing at me for support. I clasp my hands behind my back and watch in silence. Presently, and with little stress on either side, she has the information we need: Lieutenant Ation sent five of his men ahead in the skiffs and stayed in town with nine more. Tali speaks privately over the comm. 'That's three each and a contest for the tenth...' I glance at her, but her expressions are unreadable._

_As we're leaving, the drell protests at the loss of the skiffs, stating quite rightly that Shepard could have returned them after she'd killed those responsible for them. She hesitates. She once told me that all possibilities occur to her in these situations, for good or ill. Then wordlessly, she turns back to the booth and flashes her omni-tool over the kiosk. The drell's eyes go wide as he realises she's compensated him for the skiffs. The quarian and I share a moment of pride._

_We stop just outside the shop, sheltered from above by the veranda that runs the outside of the square. 'Shepard, it is likely we have already been spotted,' I warn. 'We should head down the passage to the east.'_

_'If we hold the end of that passage the mercs will have the sun full in the their faces,' she realises, drawing her shotgun. 'Good call.'_

_'We need to find out who they are working for,' I remind her._

_'If we find their ship I can hack the logs and trace the transmissions to the source,' suggests Tali._

_'Alternatively we take them out, three each, but retain the tenth for questioning,' I counter. 'But we'd have to decide what to do with him once we have the information.'_

_She turns her visor transparent the better to talk to us. 'It wouldn't hurt to let him run back,' she decides. 'If we killed them all the effect would be the much the same on their employer. Stay sharp, the heat on this planet fools the sensors - with radiation shielding things tend to blend into the background. Assume they know this and we'll be fine. Thane, I don't suppose the wind gives you any clues?'_

_I orient myself with the flow of air, breathe out in prayer to Amonkira, and inhale the desert. Clear water, salt, sand, spices and frying food... and acrid turian sweat, and machine oil. I repeat the procedure and go deeper, but the scents are confused and hard to make sense of. 'There is a storm coming. It's highly likely they have a heavy mech, and that someone already holds the end of that passage. Probably a sniper.'_

_'Okay. Tali, boot up a drone. If they have a Ymir it's your job to take it down. Thane, long range for the moment. See if you can take out the guy at the end of the passage; if we hold it stay sniping, if not, bullets and biotics. And remember, save the tenth for questioning.'_

_'I like it,' comments Tali'Zorah. 'Nice and balanced and equally distributed.'_

_'Anyone disables the tenth without killing him, I'll buy them a drink,' adds the commander._

_My rifle clicks as I unfold it. She's already glowing with biotic energy. Tali's drone sits quiet on her wrist but flashes, ready to be deployed. Her other hand holds her shotgun._

_'Move out.'_

_She returns her visor to shielded mode and leads us down to the corner and along the east side of the square. She signals me to cross the entrance of the passage and to take cover on the other side of the wall. I strafe across, but nothing happens. The scanner reveals nothing. I raise the Viper and attempt to look down the passage, but the setting sun is blasting beams of bright light directly into the scope. Defiant._

_Deep breath._

_'Shepard, the light is too strong. I can't get a clear view down the passage.'_

_'Not a problem. Switch up and run like hell after me.'_

_'Wait—' protests Tali, but my Siha spreads her wings and, powered by a biotic Charge, kicks off a broken piece of wall and soars the length of the passage. There is a colossal crunch from the far end, and on an open comm channel, a male voice groans. Tali swears and launches her drone, vaulting the broken wall and matching my stride. 'Damnit Shepard!'_

_Reaching the rubble at the end of the passage I see the dazed mercenary staggering to his feet; no sign of the commander. But gunshots blast from the right side of the passage and smash the merc against the wall. A thermal clip falls from his belt and his rifle, now a twisted piece of metal, drops to the dust. The drone fires a blast of electricity into the receding heat signature. My Siha has had a rough landing from such a long Charge, and has crash-landed in a broken crate. She shakes the stars from her skull. Tali pulls her up from the floor with a hand. I crouch and arrange the broken body as best I can._

_'Thanks... Ugh. Well that solved that problem. Sorry to deprive you of a shot.'_

_'We could have sent the drone, Shepard. Why do you always insist on charging in?' protests Tali, angry in her fear._

_'Because I like it. It's fun.'_

_'Siha, the wind is picking up.'_

_'I noticed. Okay, that's storm's rolling in fast so I'm changing the plan. We take them all out and go for the ship. We hold this position till we count nine more corpses, or till the sand clears. Stay short range for now. Anything moves you shoot now and ask questions later. I'll buy both of you a drink afterwards.'_

_'What about civilians?' asks Tali meekly._

_'No one but those with ill business will be out in a sandstorm,' I comment. 'Drell may be adapted to heat, but there is nevertheless a limit to how many grains of sand one can inhale and still be capable of breathing.'_

_'You might want to put your mask on then.'_

_'We are sheltered in this passage from the worst of it.’_

_'Thane that was an order.'_

_With a great effort I stifle the memory of last night before I relive it completely, distracting myself with unfolding my mask. It is difficult to keep privacy on a small ship, but this is something I would rather not share with Tali'Zorah. I don the mask and concede despite myself that it is easier to breathe with a filter in place._

_We wait. The sand whips and screams between the buildings; from behind us the setting sun sends beams through the haze but the light levels are falling rapidly. Tali's sensors pick up a heat signature at the end of the passage and she drains its shield in one go. The drone buzzes ahead and the spark fizzes in the gloom._

_'Eight!' crows the quarian._

_'One for me, one for Tali. Your move, Krios.'_

_I turn, stowing my gun, and begin scrambling up the rubble at the end of the passage. As I arrive at the summit the wind batters me; I remain crouched while I scan for hostiles. The buildings above to our left are taller but all are ruined and abandoned; I'm not sure how stable they would be. Even before I met Shepard I wouldn't have used them: too high a chance of it collapsing before taking out the target._

_Bullets spatter into my shield from the other side of the rubble; I turn, draw my Tempest, blast the sand with return fire. Grunting from the three mercs below. Convenient. Crouch behind a slab and reload as more bullets thunder into the concrete, rapid-fire weapons with the boom of a shotgun. The concrete is disintegrating and still there's no break._

_Suddenly I have an idea. Drop silently down back to our side of the rubble, disentangle the grenade launcher from my Siha's back. She's busy squinting through the dust for a merc in cover at the far end of the passageway. Deploy the grenade launcher, sight quickly, and fire. A deceptively quiet 'phut' sound, and the grenade curves through the air over the rubble and disappears. A scream of 'Incoming! Down down down!' from the other side, then a muted explosion. Three red dots vanish from my scanner._

_I breathe again and set down the weapon. Brutal for my tastes and training, but effective. Something I've picked up from her, she who used a missile launcher to kill the single mercenary who broke through my shield on the rooftops. 'Blessed be... Five left.'_

_'That's not fair, you got all your three in one go! Wait... I think there's someone setting up in that building, ten o'clock,' Tali informs us. 'I'm picking up radio transmissions.'_

_'Comms?'_

_'No, it's a narrow-band signal.'_

_'That's odd...'_

_I unfold my rifle and scan the unstable building in the direction Tali indicated. Flickering movement but too much interference from the wind and sand to get a clear shot. 'Shepard, I'm going into the building. I'll take out whatever it is and hold his position.'_

_'Good hunting, and stay safe.'_

_I nod, and scramble again up the rubble, heading to the right this time and into the ruin. As I go I can hear them arguing between gunshots about how many points a heavy mech is worth._

_The merc's comm channel has so far consisted of the usual battle cries, but now I begin to pick out instructions. I slip through the broken rooms, running along beams and flitting from shadow to shadow. Crouching at the end of an intact corridor, I take a moment to sort through the comm chatter. What I discern chills me. 'Shepard?' I murmur on our encrypted channel. 'They're planning to use a mech to blast us out with missiles.'_

_She swears. 'Not much heavy cover round here.'_

_'If we send my drone at it at point blank range the explosion will take it out. Or at least, most of it out,' suggests Tali through the rattle of gunfire._

_It suddenly occurs to me what the link is between the two. 'Siha… The sandstorm must be forcing them to use short range control to direct the mech. Hence the transmitter.'_

_'So if you sabotage the transmitter there's no problem?'_

_'But Shepard, the mech was mine!'_

_'We may still need you if Thane can't get to the transmitter in time, Tali. And you can take all the pieces of it you want if we get control of it. If we don't, then we're going over the rubble wall and I'll give it a trail of grenades to follow while you do your stuff. Understood?'_

_'All right.'_

_'Understood.'_

_'Do it.'_

_I take a moment to orientate myself, pulling my focus together to a razor edge, reaching out for those greater than I to guide my hands and feet. I know he is there and he does not know I am. I know how to kill him effortlessly and without needless suffering, something I am sure he does not know._

_Glide through the corridor and climb up into the open ceiling, scrambling between pipes and beams. Sand blasts and pulses through the chambers of the building like blood through a heart. I sink back into myself and let my training guide my body. Watch my hands wrap around a pipe and feel Rakhana's gravity welcome my limbs to the crumbling floor as I fold down from the ceiling and crouch on the ground. Still silent, still unseen. The mercenary is a turian female._

_Three paces forwards, low kick to the back of the knee, grab arm, twist, quick sharp finger stab under jaw plates, and a snap of the head back to break the neck as consciousness fades. Crunch. She slumps into my arms and I let her down, crossing her arms. Eleven seconds and she is gone to the deep water. I peel her breather mask from her white-plated head and close her green eyes. 'Be at peace...'_

_I come back into possession of my body and examine the transmitter. No witnesses, I am always sure of that, but soon they will register the comm silence. I break into it quickly with my omni-tool and soon I have configured a rough but serviceable control._

_'Shepard, I have control of the mech.'_

_'Good job!'_

_'What? No! You owe me, Krios! That was my kill!'_

_'I have just secured valuable salvage for you, Tali'Zorah,' I protest, carefully looking out of the window hole. When I killed the technician, the heavy mech had stalled in its progress across the square; I reanimate it quickly and a wiry human in Blue Suns uniform removes his hand from his helmet. That was close: another second and he would have discovered the loss of the technician. 'It's heading to the passage from the south side of the square. Orders, Siha?'_

_'Take it right into the mouth of the passage, then turn it round and blow them to hell.'_

_'It is likely they will soon discover the loss of the technician controlling the transmitter,' I point out._

_'If that happens first, just go for it. We're coming up into the building to join you. Tali, leave the drone here to distract them.'_

_I guide the mech through the sand. Three mercenaries follow it, with presumably the lieutenant behind. 'Shepard, there's one merc unaccounted for.'_

_'Understood. He can be our–' The noun she uses doesn’t translate. Staccato human syllables. A sudden shiver, hearing her true voice in my ear._

_'Our what?'_

_She sounds it out. ‘Ta-ttle ta-le. 'I'll explain later.'_

_I station the heavy mech at the entrance to the passage and power up the missiles. Hearing the rapid beeping, one mercenary starts jeering. I whip the mech into reverse and wheel it around, and loose off two missiles simultaneously at the ground. The explosion is horrendous, loud and cloudy and obvious. Disgusted, I deactivate the mech. I kneel and arm myself to make this death clean, at least. The dust and blood haze clears on the next blast of wind, and through the storm I can make out the lieutenant staring at the pirated mech. He has one hand on his head and the dead technician's radio bursts into life. 'Sahira! What the fuck?'_

_The rifle kicks into my shoulder as I fire, and the lieutenant's head and hand are gone in a red haze. The explosion echoes around the square and is chased out by the winds. I eject the heat sink and disentangle my omni-tool properly from the transmitter. I want nothing more to do with the thing. True the plan was effective, but it went against all my training to execute it._

_I close myself into prayer until the other two arrive, and they courteously leave me to my devotions. Tali creeps past me and retrieves the transmitter. I hear my Siha place her boot on the window ledge and imagine her examining the chaos below._

_Conflict swirls inside me like the sandstorm: my Siha ordered my body to perform this action, but my soul cleaved to her; my soul entangled myself in hers. Does that not make me responsible for this destruction? These were not the actions of a tool, yet I am a tool in her hands, moulded to her will. I am the bullet that she fired. Is it my place to question my actions, which are the actions of one I believe to be a Siha incarnate?_

_I open my eyes. The sun has almost disappeared behind the rubble and sends glowing beams through the dust. The sunset of my time in the universe... Sunset eyes defiant in the scope... Sunset scything into a half-constructed building on Illium… Dying warmth... Spreading colour... The hot glitter of light on the sea..._

_I stand up. My second Siha pushes off the wall and comes to me. 'We figure the tenth mercenary is waiting with the ship,' she informs me. 'I'd like you to help Tali dismantle what she needs from the heavy mech and head to the shuttle. I'll meet you there in a little while.'_

_I bow my head. 'Understood.'_

_I have much to think about.  
_


	7. Deal

_What is it to me if he has pronounced it? What is it to me if he has not pronounced it?_

* * *

Shepard had taken pride in surprising the tenth mercenary – the human hadn't noticed her approach at all and had almost wet himself when she tapped him on the shoulder and he span around into the gaping barrel of her Eviscerator. Stealth was a foreign concept to her methods, but sometimes it was fun to try it out: one of the many things she'd learned from the master assassin. 

When assured that the rest of his squad were definitely out of the picture, the mercenary had crumbled in her hands, personally transferring their contract to her omni-tool. He was a hired gun, naïve as a baby hanar, and could only tell her that their squad had been formed by Captain Mjitch, on a freighter in the Faryar system, in the Hourglass Nebular.

'We had no idea we were going after the human Spectre,' he babbled. 'We were just told to take down the drell. I've told you all I know, I swear.'

'If you'd known who your target was, or who his friends were, you'd never have come,' observed Shepard. 'Mjitch must have known that. I'd steer clear of him if you want to live more than another few months.'

'Oh god. All right. I should have seen the signs. Sending us halfway across the galaxy to a cemetery world to kill a target with no name? Oh god. I'm an idiot.'

'Now are you going to run away and start a new quiet life on Eden Prime?'

'Yes ma'am. Thank you ma'am.'

The Blue Suns ship had landed on the other side of town, and Shepard had the whole of the settlement to traverse to get to the shuttle. The battle replayed in her mind as she walked. Sabotaging the heavy mech had reminded her of finding Garrus holed up in that apartment on Omega, and watching a similar incident unfold. She wished she could have got a better view of this one. The looks on their faces must have been priceless. Now that she thought about it, it puzzled her that Thane had shot the remaining Blue Sun in the head rather than just blasting him with the mech. 

The sandstorm was abating in the twilight, and survivors were beginning to emerge. Occasional blasts of wind still flapped through door hangings and made primitive swing doors bang against the walls. A crowd was gathering in the square where the fight had taken place; the remains of the mech were piled neatly in a corner and were being picked over by a group of drell in grimy overalls with toolkits. A larger group stood at the entrance to the passage, heads bowed. She assumed they were disposing of the bodies in their own way, and left without further intervention. 

The sky was glazed with blue-black by the time she reached the port and trudged through the sand to the shuttle. Strange stars pricked through the gloom. Tali'Zorah had been combing the abandoned storage modules and came running over as she approached. 'Shepard. Did you get the information?'

Shepard flashed her omni tool by way of an answer. Tali fell in step. 'I'm a little worried about Thane,' she said, selecting a private channel. 'After we finished with the mech he called the people of the settlement to give final rites to the mercenaries. Then he helped me carry the pieces back to the shuttle and he's been sitting inside in silence ever since.'

'It's not that unusual, Tali. Remember the time with those batarian slavers with the control collars? We didn't see him for two days after that.'

'I know, but that was... Well. I just thought you should know. He is very lucky,' she added wistfully.

They climbed into the shuttle. The assassin had removed his breathing mask and was sitting forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped and his head bowed. He barely reacted as the airlock sealed and closed, and the shuttle prepared to force its way past the atmosphere and back up to the Normandy. Once more the cemetery of the drell fell away beneath the thrusters, and the planet was transformed into another jewel in the dark. The sun peered over the edge and flared bright against the blackness. 

Thane remained silent and withdrawn all the way through the cargo hold. Tali peeled off at engineering and recruited Daniels to help her unload the mech parts. In the elevator he spoke up. 'I will return to Life Support for the present time. I wish to meditate on recent events.'

'A lot happened in the last forty-eight hours,' she said gently, hefting her helmet beneath her arm. 'Take as long as you need.'

'Thank you.' He stepped out of the elevator. 

'Thane. We will get that desert vacation. I swear.'

'Hmn.'

Not for the first time, as the elevator rose again, did Shepard consider the irony of the most arid section of the ship being Life Support. She sighed and headed to plot a course for the Hourglass Nebula.

*

'Hey commander, you think it's a good idea giving Tali all those pieces of metal and plastic to play with?'

'Why, Joker? What are you afraid of?'

'Nothin' in particular. I just get a little itchy when she comes back with new toys. Seems explosions and super-heated suns are never far off when that happens.'

'Haestrom was a one-off.'

'I guess. You know, everyone seems to spend a lot of time in their own little boxes on this ship. It'd be fun to get everyone together once in a while in the mess hall. You know, crack a few beers, kick back a bit, reminisce about all our near-death experiences...'

'I'm not so sure about that last part. But you have a point. It has been a while since we all got together.'

'Not forgetting the time you and Dr Chakwas got drunk on Serrice brandy...'

'She told you about that?'

Joker winked and fumbled beneath his seat. The contents of the bottle sloshed enticingly as he jiggled it before her.

'You...! You know what,' conceded Shepard, abandoning herself, 'You're right. And I think I have an idea. Ship-wide call: tell everyone to assemble in the mess hall tonight.'

*

The mess was packed out, the crew divided into three large groups seated, or standing, around the tables. Shepard had rooted out every pack of human cards on the boat and provided each group with a super-deck of four packs each. One quick crash-course later, and the first Normandy Cheat Championship had begun. Sgt. Gardner had been persuaded to release his stock of alcohol, and it turned out he had even acquired some turian spirits on their last shore leave. Garrus, it seemed, was stocking up. He was also turning out to be an incredibly good liar. 

'Eight sevens,' he purred, setting down a handful of cards. 

Several crew members exchanged glances, checking against their own hands. Crewman Patel was the first to break. 'Cheat!' 

Garrus' eyes sparked, and he revealed his play card by card: six... seven... eight sevens. Patel hit her head on the table in frustration amid roars of laughter. She stretched out a hand and took the pile without looking. Shepard folded her arms and grinned. The round continued. 

'Two nines.'

'One ten.'

'Hold up...' Patel was still sorting her huge pile of cards. 'I think have some of those somewhere...'

Shepard drifted on to Joker's table, which also included Jacob. This was a cautious game, with no one risking more than four cards at a time. A round went past in which nine out of nine players put down “Three twos”. 

'Oh come on!' she protested, unable to contain herself. 

'Sorry commander, I think we're waiting to catch someone in the act,' grinned Jacob.

'A shot of tequila says your next call is wrong.'

A murmur of appreciation and anticipation went round the table. Jacob looked at her in surprise, then grinned. 'Alright, you're on.'

The game continued, the pile of cards in the centre growing larger and larger. Joker kept glancing at her, and when she met his eyes, he mouthed “Don't forget the lemon!” Bursts of laughter and table-slapping came from Garrus and Patel's table. Eventually Crewman Goldstein, after a long hesitation, played five Queens. 

'Cheat.'

There was a collective 'Oooo,' from the players of this game. Goldstein bit her lip, biting back a huge smile. She glanced up at Jacob, then at Shepard, then back at Jacob.

'Damnit Goldy, flip the cards,' blurted Johnson. 

'Better get yourself a shot glass commander.'

'Hold your horses, Jacob. Put the Chief out of his misery, Goldstein.'

Goldstein turned over her cards to reveal, all in a row, four Queens and a three of hearts.

'No!' Shepard threw back her head as the table erupted into cheers. Jacob half-stood and reached across to high-five with Goldstein, then stood fully and faced her. 

'Ma'am, I believe you require a tequila.'

'I believe I do, Chief.'

More whoops from her crew as they headed for the kitchen counter, which had been transformed into a bar for one night only. Jacob slid behind and ducked down for a moment, and came up with two shot glasses, a salt cellar, and a lemon.

'I hate to see anyone drinking alone,' he said slyly, filling up the glasses. Shepard cut a slice of lemon in half, handed one piece to Jacob, and dished salt onto the smooth ledge of skin between her finger and thumb. With salt and lemon in one hand and the shot glass in the other, she became aware that the party they had left were hanging over the backs of the their chairs watching them. 

'Here's to mammalian livers,' she said incoherently, and clinked glasses. In perfect synchronisation with Jacob, she licked the salt, swallowed the tequila down, bit down hard on the lemon slice, and slammed the empty glass upside down on the bar top. She high-fived Jacob with both hands, to the accompaniment of cheers from the card game.

'My god commander, did I just witness you gambling and drinking?' 

Shepard turned around with the piece of lemon still in her mouth, and Dr Chakwas' next sarcastic comment was lost in a rare burst of laughter.

*

'Shepard.'

'Hm?'

The world was getting fuzzy at the edges, and most of the humans had already staggered off to sleep. The remaining pocket of crew members had switched to Skyllian Five, and the remaining team members who'd not requested to be dropped off somewhere after the suicide mission had clumped together: Jacob, Garrus, Tali, Kasumi, Mordin, and Miranda. They’d said goodbye Grunt on Tuchanka; Legion had asked to be dropped in the Perseus Veil (literally: the Geth unit had balled themselves up and asked to be fired out the airlock); and Zaeed had made a great fuss about being given enough money to hire a ship on Omega, then had given Shepard a piece of his old rifle as a present. Samara, gracious as ever, had requested to be left on Illium.

'We stripped down to two packs. Are you in?' asked Garrus.

'Still Cheat?'

Mordin’s eyes sparkled. 'Yes! Intriguing as game – had not fully appreciated basic short-term memorisation skills. Or lack thereof. Here Shepard.’ He stood up. ‘Take my place. Must retire. Messages to send before sleep cycle. Won’t be missed.’ He sniffed a long inbreath, narrowing his eyes. ‘Too good at counting to ‘play fair’, as Jack puts it.’

‘Just need to get the ninja to quit hiding cards up her sleeves, then us mere mortals might have a chance,’ sniped Jack, shuffling the cards viciously.

‘I told you, I have no idea how that Ace got there,’ protested Kasumi. ‘And anyway, I don’t even have sleeves.’

Shepard sat down and considered them all as Jack dealt. Miranda, honest about her role with Cerberus, kept suggesting to Shepard that they really try to convince Jack to head off and find her own way through the universe. Jack kept trying to suggest to Shepard that they throw the Cheerleader out the trash disposal. Kasumi was still working her way through Keiji’s greybox, and maintained she needed somewhere quiet to do so – Shepard wasn’t sure how the Normandy fitted that description, but the thief’s cloaking and submachine-gun expertise came in handy in the field, and Kasumi seemed to appreciate the distraction. Tali was formally attached to the Normandy and was devoted to Shepard, she suspected, in more ways than one. Jacob seemed content to roam around the galaxy with her for the time being, but she had little doubt that he'd move on when he felt ready – Mordin too, though recently he’d been making noises about trying to find Maelon again.

Garrus she wasn't sure about. In a confusing moment right before the suicide mission she'd... been rather more honest with him than she intended. She had expected him to leave after their return, but he had stayed. Back on Omega, his embarrassment about his nickname had been very sweet, and before she recruited Thane she had tended to think of the turian as her own archangel, despite his new tendency to beat people before and after asking questions. He'd certainly saved her ass a number of times.

She cleared her throat and sorted her cards. Slight movement in the corner of her eye made her look up, and from her position with her back to the main battery, she could see a humanoid shadow on the port side entrance to the mess. The high, open collar and head ridges were distinctive. She smiled to herself and continued sorting her cards. 

'Good hand, commander?'

Shepard met Miranda's raised eyebrow with a smug look. 'We'll see.'

Tali, quarian hands ill-suited for manipulating multiple thin rectangles of card, had whipped herself up a card holder: a long thin pyramid of metal with a slot in the top to arrange her hand. She plucked three and laid them down. 'Three twos.'

'Four threes.'

'One four.' That was Jack, playing with character-shattering caution. 

'Cheat,' challenged Jacob.

Jack slammed her fist into the table. 'God damnit!'

The team laughed as the fuming biotic collected the pile. 'Four fucking threes and don't you DARE call me out.'

So Miranda didn't lie. Interesting. Shepard selected her cards. 'Two fours.'

'Five fives.'

Jack glared at her cards, but said nothing. 

'Two sixes.' Jacob laid his cards down casually. Garrus caught Shepard's eye and winked through his ever-present visor. 

‘One six.’ Kasumi, playing with a flourish, making her card flick into view with an expert snap of her fingers, followed by a lightning fast glance at Jacob.

'Three sevens.' Tali, laying down her play with both hands. 

'One six.' Miranda, smug and smiling. 

'Two fives.' Jack, cautious again and defiant.

'Three sixes,' claimed Shepard, placing two sixes and an Ace onto the pile.

'Five fives,' purred Garrus, eliciting a snigger from Tali.

'Cheat,' rumbled a deep voice.

The rest of the team looked up in surprise as the drell emerged from the corner. Garrus' eye plates twitched. He turned over his cards one by one, revealing, with mounting excitement, five fives. 

Thane remained still for a moment, hands clasped behind his back as the team cheered. Then he shrugged philosophically and drew out the empty chair between Tali and Jacob. 'In my defence, it has been a long while since I played at cards.' He retrieved the pile easily and sorted the cards. 'Five fives.'

'Cheat.'

His hand still on the cards he'd played, Thane turned a baleful look on the turian, who stared innocently back.

Thane sighed tragically and drew the cards back into his hand. The table erupted in laughter again.

'But you have those cards! Why did you cheat?' protested Tali.

'I felt like taking a risk.'

Shepard wiped tears of mirth from her eyes, and discovered he was looking at her steadily.


	8. Luck

_At your battle-cry, my lady, the foreign lands bow low. When humanity comes before you in awed silence at the terrifying radiance and tempest, you grasp the most terrible of all the divine powers._

* * *

The card party had broken up in the early hours, and he hadn't followed her up to the loft. That was okay. She was beginning to understand why he needed time. He clearly hadn't taken much pride in pirating the heavy mech, and to an assassin of his calibre, pride was important. And a good thing it was, too. She was glad that he had come out of himself enough to participate in the silliness of the card game.

She was deleting some old mail at her terminal in the CIC some hours later when Joker piped himself through. 'Hourglass Nebula ETA one hour, commander.'

'Understood. Carry on Joker.'

She headed up to the loft to change, musing about who to take with her. The plan was simple. The plan was always simple. Plan A: attempt, at least, to accomplish the mission without firing a shot. Unlikely. Plan B then: charge in, take what they came for (in this case the location of the Blue Suns' employer), and leave. The wisdom or the logic of chosen targets in these sorts of assignments was always overridden by the morality of the situation. Shepard didn't care that most of the galaxy would think twice about boarding a freighter packed full of mercenaries and attempt to interrogate their captain. Mjitch was their key to finding the player of this game.

It wasn't that Thane couldn't handle these inexperienced idiots by himself. It's just that she preferred not to let him, on principle. 

She fixed the last piece of armour in place and stretched, checking the flexibility. Her helmet under her arm, she moved to the lift. The elevator rolled her smoothly down to the third deck.

He was lying on his back on the camp bed, tapered legs crossed at the ankles and his hands clasped on his stomach. His eyes were open, staring at the metal and plastic above his head. He didn't notice her entrance at first, and only when her boot clunked against the floor plating did he blink both ways and sit up. 'I apologise. Siha. I...' He sighed. 'You must be upset with me. I... have not been very communicative. You are dressed,' he noted, belatedly. 'Are we close?'

'A half hour or so. I was a little confused, I admit, but I think I figured it out.' She sat next to him on the little bed and dangled her helmet in her hands. Their shoulders were touching. 'My actions on Rakhana created a lot of memories, didn't they. For the survivors.'

'I spoke with some of the people of Ir'tasaha before we left. The mercenaries had been less than courteous and they were glad to be rid of them.'

'You also asked them to bury the bodies.'

'Not bury. They will be consumed with fire and the remains given to the water.'

She accepted the correction with a nod. Presently she said, 'I created a lot of memories for you too. I get the feeling you weren't pleased with the way I handled the situation.'

'Nothing I cannot handle.'

'I didn't think you were. So I came by to tell you. The next time I order you to do something against your training, something that's going to affect you like this... '

'You...'

'You tell me to back off.'

He looked up and directly into her eyes, his mouth opening in surprise. She'd seen that look once before, on that night. She couldn't help herself.

He kissed her back furiously, fired up by what she guessed was a complex mix of emotions. Then it was he who broke out this time, a half laugh falling from his lips into the air between them. 'Ha... Siha, no. You would not favour any of the others in this way. When we are working, treat me as you would anyone else.'

'I can't,' she said simply. 'There are too many unhappy ghosts following me around already. With the time we have, I... need to get this right. Call it my atonement if you like. For those I couldn’t save. Let me protect you from myself.'

He tilted his head, searching her eyes. 'I prayed for you last night. I confess, at one point I... I realised I was praying _to_ you. But mostly for.'

'No god can save my soul, Thane,' she murmured.

'I felt better for it.'

'Good. That's good. Mm. Do you want to come on the freighter to find Mjitch? Or would you rather stay? Please just tell me what you prefer.'

'I am yours to command. But should I not be required I had been thinking of composing a message to my son.'

'That's fine.' She put her hand on his knee and pushed herself into standing. Something he had said previously registered in her mind under a new light and she stood in front of him looking down. 'Thane... did you sleep at all last night?'

He looked down. '…Define sleep.'

'Ah.' She placed her helmet down and straightened. 'Sleep...' She reached down and took his face in her hands, tilting it up. 'Sleep is when...' She raised her thumbs and caressed his main eyelids. 'You close your eyes...' He did so. '… and dream.' She ran her fingers into the fringes on either side of his neck and kissed him again. He made a muffled noise and melted in her hands. 

*

Together with Garrus she headed down to Engineering to pick up Jack, then scrambled the shuttle. The MSV Ifrit was in orbit around Wenrum, a lone pawn circling a white knight. The glare of planet's bright surface obliged them to raise the sun filter of the shuttle view ports. 'Kowloon class, commander,' noted Joker over the comm. 'Old style. Shouldn't be too many on board. It's nowhere near dead in the water though so watch yourselves.'

'Any idea of the cargo?'

'Can't tell I'm afraid. Heads up.'

Faryar's light reflected sharply off the rim of the planet, then they were in the shadow, and closing in on the freighter hanging over the planet's night. Garrus shifted. Shepard considered him. 'How's your head?'

Garrus' eye-plates flared. 'It's been beaten into submission by Dr Chakwas' finest dextro-friendly painkillers.'

Jack snorted. 'Can't tame your drink, birdboy?'

'At least I can remember all of last night.'

'Ouch.'

'In fact some time after the commander left I believe I remember you climbing on top the table and--'

'Alright! Alright, she doesn't need to know about that! Whatever it was...'

Amused, Shepard looked from one to the other and received a glare from Jack and a twitch of the mandibles from Garrus. 'Okay, time to focus. I'm going to try and get the location out of them without shooting them.'

'Eheh. Shepard, these are _mercenaries_.'

'Yeah, they aren't going to let you get a fucking word in. They're all trigger-happy lunatics who deserve to be spaced.'

'I need to try,' replied Shepard. 'You'll be pleased to know I fully expect it not to work.'

The turian huffed a laugh. 'That's what I like to hear.'

'In that case we clean the ship.'

'Hoo yeah.' Jack stretched mentally and her skin lit up, the glow playing over her tattoos as she shifted.

A thud and a long clanking sound announced their arrival, and they unstrapped and stood while the airlock seals hissed into place. 'Welcome party incoming,' advised Joker. Shepard put on her helmet.

The airlock was surprisingly well-kept, free from bloodstains and other dirt. The door at the far end slid open once the pressure had equalised, and three mercenaries stepped in. All armed, all helmeted, all brawn. 'This is a private freighter. Who ever you are, you have no authorisation here. State your business.'

Shepard had a second to consider: intimidate or cooperate? 

'I'm a Spectre, I don't need anybody's authorisation anywhere. I'm here to speak with Mjitch.'

The lead merc appeared to appraise her. That by itself made her want to shoot him in the crotch. 'Follow me.'

Behind and to her left she heard Jack's 'Ugh!' of protest. 

The mercenaries led them through the belly of the ship, stacked haphazardly with containers and storage modules. Once you'd seen one Kowloon, you'd seen them all. Discreetly checking her radar, Shepard counted about twenty crew.

At the head of the cargo bay was the regulation office, into which their guards motioned them. Inside a thick-set white woman in Blue Suns armour was working the terminal. 'What?'

'Are you Captain Mjitch?'

'Who wants to know?'

'Commander Shepard.'

'The Spectre?' Only now did the woman turn around. She wore a targeting visor, and her pale hair was slicked back over her skull. 'Honoured, commander. What can I do for you?'

Garrus made a tiny noise of disgust. Shepard considered quickly. From the low-key greeting in the airlock, to this conversation so far, it appeared no one had expected her: the tenth mercenary therefore hadn't fled back to the freighter. So either Mjitch was bluffing, and knew exactly what was going on but was waiting to see how Shepard would play it, or she was genuinely unaware of the Rakhana team's failure. How likely was it that Lt. Ation would have omitted to update her? Fairly likely, she decided, applying her knowledge of human male-female power relations. Best to take the element of surprise then.

'Your team is dead, Mjitch. I want to know who is paying you to kill the drell. A drell who not only happens to be a master assassin, but also happens to be a member of my crew.'

Shepard had the satisfaction of watching Mjitch's features start from unsurprised and sarcastic dismissal of the deceased team, and rise to mouth-opening dread as she realised just how screwed she was. 

Shepard folded her arms and shifted her weight. 'So start talking.'

Mjitch turned back to the monitor for a moment. 'Ation, you cretin... Look, commander,' she continued, typing without looking around. 'Even if I wanted to help you out, I couldn't. My orders came on an encrypted transmission and the file erased itself about forty-eight hours ago.'

'Your terminal must have some record of it.' Shepard had long learned never to trust anyone who types with their back to you while they are talking. She shifted her weight again and used the movement as cover to draw up her Barrier.

'Nope. But if you've killed my team I'm going to be in deep shit as it is. I might be able to pacify my employer by handing in your blood-stained helmet as an offering.'

'You’re welcome to try,' intoned Jack.

'Look, captain, we're not leaving without this information. If you give it to us freely we won't have to lay out more bodies, and we should be able to remove your employer from the field of play. You wouldn't have to worry about retribution.'

'Sorry Commander. There's the Blue Suns reputation to consider into the bargain. Ation was a bloody fool, but I won't be the one who surrenders confidential information to a Spectre.'

Mjitch wheeled around and powered off a round from her assault rifle, but Shepard and her squad were already diving for the door. 'Garrus crowd control, Jack, shotgun. The starboard wall is clear for cover.'

Shepard sprinted across in a blaze of crossfire, followed closely by Jack. Garrus gave them cover and vaulted behind another container nearer the door to Mjitch's office. 'They're organised, Shepard.'

'For all the good it will do them.' 

Fortunately for Shepard, it was hard to be distracted by philosophical objections about killing people when they were the ones who were determined to kill her first. Like the freighters themselves, firefights within them tended to blur together after a while. This one was only remarkable for Jack blasting an entire container and sending it toppling backwards, taking out four particularly stupid mercs in one go. The container doors had burst open and scattered crates of platinum everywhere, and a few boxes of eezo. 

As she'd suspected, Mjitch had made a run for the stairs. 'We have to take out Mjitch before she snipes us.'

'You got it!' 

Jack blasted herself off towards the stairs, leaving Garrus and Shepard to cover her. 'Other than her, don't break anything!' Shepard felt compelled to yell after her.

'Did you really want this to end peacefully?' asked the turian, ejecting his clip. 

'I thought I should try.' Bullets spat into her shield from the left. Shepard turned and loosed a Shockwave, and a wailing mercenary went sailing through the air across the cargo bay. She caught him with an incendiary shotgun blast which pounded him against the wall. She ducked back behind the module just as the wall behind her exploded, a hole punched into it by a high calibre round. 'Shit. Mjitch is in position. Jack, move it!’

'Shepard, I think I know where she is; I could get her from here.'

'You do and I won't be responsible for Jack afterwards. Hold for now. Rifle the rest if you want the practise.'

'With pleasure.'

Shepard was running out of sinks for her Eviscerator. Either she switched up, gave her biotics a workout, or left cover for more heat sinks. She decided to do the latter, and crouching, edged to peek out of her current cover. 

The rifle boomed again. Her shield shattered; her head snapped sideways and the impact knocked her backwards. 'Ugh!' 

Her neck felt like it had been used as a varren whip. Dazed, she staggered back behind the tall module, on hands and knees. Her vision was spiked with red. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Too close.

Garrus’ voice sounded blurry. 'Shepard!' 

'I'm okay. Hggh...'

'Damnit Jack, move move move!'

'Fuck's sake! AaaaaAAAAGH!' Jack's cry of rage was accompanied by a purple-blue explosion from the top level, and two bodies came sailing down. A tattooed blur shot from one side of the upper level to the other, swept a pale-skinned mercenary with a rifle in its wake, and disappeared into the office at the far end. Through hazy eyes, Shepard watched with satisfaction as the wall popped and bulged out in odd places as the biotic did her work.

Garrus had leaped between containers and crouched at her side. 'Shepard, talk to me.'

'Hnn… I feel like an elcor stood on my head.'

'That's it?!'

'Barrier took the worst of it. Armour held.'

'Damnit Shepard, if I had your luck...'

'Are we clear?'

'Not yet, but they're distracted by the eh, “discussion” happening in the top room.'

'Okay. Let's clean up. You pick up any shotgun any clips? I was scouting for some when my head exploded.'

Garrus handed her two, but put his hand on her shoulder before standing. 'Don't scare me like that again. I don't have much jaw left of my own to pick up off the floor.'

'Do my best but I can't promise anything.' She reloaded, shook her head once more and checked the radar. The pounding and banging from upstairs had ceased. She crept out and sprinted forwards, noting someone in cover to her left. She peeped out and blasted him when he strafed out. The incendiary shell made short work of what remained of his chest. On the other side of the bay, Garrus had climbed quietly up on top of a pile of containers and had his rifle ready. Shepard fired a shot across and a merc dodged out of the way, right into view of the turian. A crack, and a bump as the corpse bounced off the container, and silence. He reloaded and the targeting laser scanned the far corner, and Shepard only noticed someone was there when the body dropped into view, sprawling a pistol across the floor.

'Hmn.' Garrus ejected the heat sink and swung down from his perch. 'All clear.'

'Good work. Jack? What’s your status?'

The biotic was out of breath, and sounded oddly shaken. 'Shepard, get up here. You need to see this.'

*


	9. Recall

_But funeral offerings were brought, as if I had never lived there. I approached the light, but the light was scorching hot to me. I approached that shade, but I was covered with a storm._

* * *

'You were very lucky, commander.'

Currently, Shepard didn't feel so lucky. She was sitting with her legs dangling from a bed in the med bay, head hanging low, while Dr Chakwas prodded and pressed at the right side of the base of her neck. 'Aagh...'

'Looks like merely grade three whiplash, though by everyone else's logic you should be a headless corpse. Whatever upgrades you added to your suit, they were well worth it. I'll give you some painkillers and some exercises to ease the muscles, you'll be fine in a few days. Someone up there is looking out for you, Shepard.'

'Spare me the metaphysics.' She pulled her sleeves up and zipped up her jumpsuit, raising her head gingerly. Dr Chakwas had her back to the beds and was fiddling in a cabinet. Shepard slipped down and winced as her neck protested. 'Ugh... How's the rest of the crew doing?'

'Oh fine. Garrus is still self-conscious about his scarring but I keep telling him I can't do anything about it. Maybe he'd listen to you on that account; you did requisition the platinum for other uses.'

'And... just a quick question.' Shepard had been fighting with herself over this one. 'If a person with Kepral's Syndrome is coughing up blood, what does that mean?'

Dr Chakwas raised her eyebrows. 'May I ask how often?'

'I'm not sure.'

'I'm afraid more than once every few days is a sign of advanced deterioration in the lungs, indicating that the disease is spreading to other organs. If it's only sporadic, it's still not a good sign, but the patient has a few months of activity.'

'Thanks. I think.'

'Take care of yourself, Shepard.' The doctor's clear eyes were understanding as she handed over the little container of pills. 

Shepard left medical rolling her neck awkwardly, and discovered Tali and Jacob had been waiting in the mess for her. 'Garrus told us everything,' explained Tali. 'Keelah, Shepard! You should be dead!'

'It wouldn't be the first time.'

'You can add “shot in the head” to the list of things that can't keep you down,' commented Jacob with a smile. 'As opposed to taking shots, you know, of alcohol. Which also can't keep you down.'

'Though both leave you with a headache. Anything happen here while we were gone?'

'Most of the team were in the comm room listening to the fight. We kind of wished Samara was still here to give us an idea of what Jack did to the captain. It sounded... extreme.' 

'I didn't ask for details, but I can tell you the aftermath was impressive.'

'Did you get the files?' asked Tali.

'Yes, what was left of them. And more besides. EDI's running them now. Thanks for coming to check on me Tali, Jacob. I wish I could stop awhile but I feel kinda sick; I need to get some rest.'

'Of course.'

'See you commander.'

Shepard groaned in pain again as she automatically turned to wave them off, and headed up to the loft with one hand pressing the side of her neck. She discovered Thane feeding the fish, and the pain receded slightly. His long figure was lit by the glowing tank, and the blue light slipped and glided over his skin and clothes. 'Hey.' 

'Siha.' Shepard passed him, trailing her hand across his shoulders as she did, and sat on the bed. 'How are you feeling?'

'Surprisingly good, considering. Pain in my neck but can't complain. How much did you hear?'

'I stayed to the end.' He came down the step and stood before her. 'I was proud of you.'

'Ah... You might think differently if you'd have seen the captain's corpse...'

'The captain's death was, I think, unavoidable. Letting Jack unleash herself is always a tactical decision. But Mjitch, after all, knowingly sent those fifteen mercenaries to their deaths on Rakhana, and I do not doubt that removing her from the galaxy has made it brighter.'

'Actually... I have a horrible feeling Mjitch was just as ignorant as those she sent. She bluffed it off but... The terminal was a mess – the transmission with the captain's contract had some sort of virus which was running riot on the system.' Registering her growing unease, he sat next to her. 'We recovered fragments and EDI's reconstituting the data now. But... it looks like the original transmission came from the Imir Relay...'

That stunned him. 'That would be in the vicinity of... No... No that can't be possible...' He stood sharply and stormed a few paces one way, then back the other. Shepard felt her insides clench: it disturbed her more than anything she'd ever witnessed to see him, usually so poised and controlled, unable to keep still for agitation. He tapped the back of one hand against the palm of the other. 'Hmm. I... did not expect this.'

'Definitely left field.'

'But... why?'

His question was so simple and so plaintive that pain or no pain, she stood quickly and grasped his shoulders. ' “I know not, but I'm sure 'tis safer to avoid what's grown than question how 'tis born.” A famous human writer said that about six hundred years ago, and since I read it it's stuck with me my entire life. Although in this case 'avoid' means 'remove'. Sometimes there are things you have to deal with, without thinking too hard about them.'

He didn't seem to register the advice. 'I... need some time to process this.' Shepard assumed this meant he wanted to retreat to his table and lifted her hands. 'Don't go.'

'What?'

He put his hands on her shoulders and pressed his heavy forehead to hers. 'I nearly lost you today. Again. It scared me and I wish to remain close to you. But if you are busy, I understand...'

'Nothing to do right now but wait on EDI.' She put her arms around him. He moved his hands, one arm wrapping around her body, the other hand laying flat on the back of her neck. 'Ahhh... ow, but that's nice... Could you just... to your left... ahh...' 

He made a deep noise of contentment. They remained that way for several minutes, she resting her head on his shoulder, he firmly rubbing and working the muscles on the side of her neck where the sniper shot had snapped her head sideways. She opened her eyes and discovered she was watching the fringe of velvet red skin shift in rhythm with his breathing. The sound of thick coughing intruded from her memories, and she gripped him tighter.

'Thane... I'm not sure where this trail will lead us, or to whom. But I'm going to follow it to the end and put a stop to it. Then I'm taking you to another desert.' 

He tightened his arms, cupping the back of her head, and the warmth between them was like that of a small sun. 

\---

Rumbling. Spark awake and reach for gun. Dark outside, glowing unfamiliar stars light the grassy plain with silver. Rumbling again. Roll off the mat and reach for helmet, equip over tightly-braided cornrows, peek outside the shelter. To the west the plain rolls away down to the sea. In other directions a range of mountains. Sentries looking confused. Beckon for M'Pele and Chen to follow. 

Perimeter check. No breaches. Still rumbling and shaking. Intermittent. Not seismic. Deep, deep sense of unease, of being watched, of exuding scent for predators. 

Huge heave of the earth, shards and clods of grass tumbling, and the thing forces its way into the sky, screaming in five pitches at once and all of them angry. It protrudes grotesquely above the planet's surface and hangs over the humans, who are by now all awake, though dazed by the sound of the thing, and scrambling for weapons. The worm retches and a jet of acid arcs down, and five marines and a container dissolve. The slow-motion landslide feeling of impossibility. What good are weapons against this savagery?

'Fall back! Move, move! Go go go go go go go!'

'Siha! Wake up.'

'Move it...!'

'Commander Shepard!'

Military training kicked in, and Shepard came back to herself to find she was twitching and gasping and already sitting upright in the blue dark. 'Agh...' The stretched muscles in her neck were pulling rhythmically in time with her racing pulse. She reached over and pressed at the skin, realising she was damp with cold sweat. 'Ah shit...'

'What was that?'

'A dream. I was... back on Akuze. When the first thresher maw attacked.' She flipped the pillow up against the back of the bed and sat back, kicking off the sheet and forcing herself to stretch out. Thane was distracted for a moment by the sight of her full-length body, sleek black skin bared on the white sheet. He leaned forward and ran a hand from her ankle all the way up to her shoulder. Shepard felt goosebumps prickle up in the wake of his touch. 

'You are here, now, with me,' murmured the drell.

She closed her eyes, and the thresher maw reared up in her vision. She shuddered and drew a deep breath. 'Aoki, Al-Tamimi, Ashkenazi, Aziz, Bhatt, Chalabi, Chen, Demir, de Santis, Diaz, Fischer, Flores, Gowda, Haddad, Hanna, Hasan, Hussein, Jukic, Kaya, Khan, Kouyate, Kwang, Lang, Ledesma, Lehtonen, Le Roux, Lin, Maddox, Martin, Maldonado, Melik, M'Pele, Nwosu, Orujov, Pant, Pradham, Qaderi, Rebane, Roy, Sadaty, Sandhu, Shekhawat, Singh, Sy, Tamada, Tremble, Vukovic, Xhafa. Lest we forget. Lest I forget.'

'My translator struggled with that, but I assume those were the names of those you lost that day. Kalihira keep them safe.'

'That was the night I found my battle sleep... Withdraw from feeling, or be consumed by it... I withdrew.' Her breathing had calmed under Thane's caresses, though she was still hugging herself tightly across her ribs. She brought her legs up and crossed them; the assassin rested his hand on her right thigh. Something occurred to her. 'Do drell dream?'

'What do you mean by that? The word has no translation for me.'

'Oh. Well. I've never asked any other species, but for humans, during a stage of our sleep cycle, our minds tend to reorganise and process information from the previous few days, and the result is an unconscious hallucination. Usually they don't make a lot of sense and can be pretty funny, but sometimes we relive traumatic experiences. Apparently it keeps us sane.'

'Ah. You recall memories when you sleep?'

'Yyyyes, but nowhere near perfectly. Usually it's a few jumbled together with some subconscious hints thrown in. The nightmares, the bad dreams, tend to be accurate... I guess you could say I just experienced a recall of Akuze. I thought it was real until you woke me up.'

'I see. I would assume that our eidetic memories make this process redundant.'

'But...' The reality was dawning on Shepard. 'You recall memories as violently as we dream? My god. How do you survive?'

'Bad times are thoroughly unpleasant to recall, and waking we're reassured that reality is different. Recalling good times is better, but recognition of the memory's evanescence is... somewhat bitter-sweet.' As if to prove his point, his eyes focused beyond her and his hand froze. 'I wake once and watch her sleep, soundless and still. Her black skin glows in the light; draws me like a magnet. I could never lose her to the darkness.' He drew a deep breath and cleared his throat sheepishly. 

By way of response, Shepard leaned against him in the darkness. His grip on her thigh went tight and firm, and he pressed his face into her hair.

*


	10. Junk

_They must lead their troops captive before you, all together. They must scatter their élite regiments for you, all together._

* * *

Shepard had pulled all the data from their last few “excursions” onto her omni-tool, and was projecting the various bits and pieces around the comm room. She thought better on her feet. EDI had struggled with the fragmented files from the MSV Ifrit's system, but through comparison and some logical guesswork with the contract from the tenth mercenary (where had he gone anyway?), and the data retrieved from the turian's PDP and the desert skiff computer, a picture was beginning to form.

And everything pointed towards the Imir relay.

The initial contract from the MSV Ifrit had been fried beyond repair by the virus, but Mjitch had transmitted a redacted copy to the Rakhana team for reference. From these two, and fragments in the datapad, EDI had been able to reconstitute two thirds of the thing. The long-range buoy signature definitely originated from the Imir relay, and the redacted copy contained snippets of forwarding code that suggested the source was somewhere in the vicinity of Relic.

She'd encountered the system once during her sweep of the Eagle Nebula, and had fired a probe down onto a tiny, angry-looking purple planet appropriately named “Rough Tide”, in pursuit of a promising concentration of platinum. The probe had been confiscated, and the Normandy had received an exceedingly polite transmission informing them that the planet had enough trouble already with alien ejaculations and would they please be good enough to probe elsewhere. Joker and Shepard had taken a while to recover from that one.

The employer, however, had been very thorough. No trace whatever of his or her identity remained in any of the transmissions – no unique piece of code or signature, nothing. Shepard was beginning to wonder if this hadn't been a face-to-face agreement, with a middleman handling the transmissions from some sort of public terminal. It all smelled like a badly-executed hit. Except...

Except, she was getting the very strong feeling that if this person had really wished to remain totally hidden, they were capable of it. These weren't just mistakes: this was a trail, a line, and the unfortunate mercenary team on Rakhana had been the bait. By her own admission, she was hooked. Someone was drawing them in, providing just enough pieces of information to enable them to follow the line back to the waiting net. And from there, the skillet?

'Not on my watch.'

Her tenacity would be the death of her. Again. 

She rounded the table and walked into another projection. This was the other disturbing thing on the Ifrit's system, the thing which had alarmed Jack so much when she discovered it. Records of a transaction. Heavily encrypted, but Shepard had seen this before. Mjitch had received their location on Rakhana from the Shadow Broker.

Recognition of this fact had been like a punch in the solar plexus, and she'd compiled the information quickly and protected it on her own omni-tool for later analysis. She wanted to believe it was a mistake, but the code signature was undeniable. Only Garrus and Jack knew so far, and when all this was over she was going to take them both quietly to Hagalaz and sort this out face to face. How had that shy and bumbling archaeologist they'd rescued from Therum turned into such a ruthless information broker? 

She rubbed at her neck and collapsed all the files. Dr Chakwas' analgesic had definitely eased the pain, and Thane's massaging hands had all but banished it, except now the area was tender with a rash after over-exposure to the drell's fine scales. Last night's nightmare had been more intense than usual, an occurrence which tended to coincide with more tender contact between them. Mordin had provided her with a concoction to keep off the worst of the hallucinatory effects when she was awake (sometimes vivid spots of colour and lights intruded even after dosing herself up), but it seemed it couldn't prevent her from dreaming.

They still had time before arriving at the relay. She headed back up to the loft.

*

'Listen up. We dealt with the pawns on Rakhana, and the knight in Blue Suns armour near Wenrum. Now we're going for the queen.'

She paused to look each of them in the eye. The comm room was not her favourite place to give these kinds of talks, but sometimes it was necessary. At least this way she could gauge reactions from everyone at once. 

'Someone will be waiting for us. Whoever this queen is, they are intelligent, cunning, and therefore extremely dangerous. They're gonna be hard to find. And they'll probably be expecting us. 

'But we know they know, and that flips the odds in our favour. The irritating thing is that I'm afraid I have very little further information to give you. I don't know where this person is located – planet-side, on a station, on a ship... I don't know how many people they are likely to have surrounding them. And I don't know who they are.'

‘Hm. Problematic.’ Shepard shot a glance at the salarian, who winked at her.

'So we're flying blind? Into a fucking trap?' summarised Jack, incredulous.

'It will give us credibility,' quipped Garrus. 'We certainly won't look like we know what we're doing.'

'The first potential problem I can see is that the queen might be counting on this,' Miranda pointed out. 

'You mean that she knows we know she knows we know nothing?'

'Shuttit Garrus,' snapped Jack, as Kasumi groaned.

'Even if she does know we know,' Tali broke in, 'that she... well, whatever, the problem is finding her. We know she's in the Relic system but what planet?'

'First Land,' supplied Thane quietly. 'It's the most heavily populated area in the system. Potentially Rough Tide, but that is less likely I think. And I believe I have some idea of who the queen is.'

All bodies in her field of vision shifted as they sat up straighter or leaned forward to catch the drell's speech. Thane was hunched forward with his elbows on his knees.

'Shepard is right. All the information we've gathered is composed of pieces we've been permitted to discover. Someone is creating a trail. I recognise the pattern. It's a hunting technique designed to snare sentient lifeforms. The hunter provokes the prey with force, then with the promise of revenge, leads it back to the waiting gun. Some drell choose to operate in this way. I'm not sure why. I believe it has something to do with followers of the Enkindlers preferring to share the responsibility for their actions.'

'Go on.'

'I have only once encountered an assassin who used this method,' continued Thane, recovering his poise and sitting up. 'A drell. Her name is Nerar Natai. We... had been assigned the same target, a slaver. I ended up chasing after him as he followed the trail left by her mercenaries. She is exact, calculating... and very skilful.'

'Do you have any idea where she might be?'

'I suspect on a station called Long Reach, in orbit around First Land. It's the largest and most populous. If she is not on board, someone there will know where she can be found.'

'Do you think she'll send a welcoming party?'

'She must know the identity of her target. It's therefore safe to presume she knows we recognised her methods.'

'Oh so she does know that we know she knows we know,' said Garrus gleefully. Thane paused. Shepard saw something that might have been a smile. Then the moment passed.

'Infinite regressions aside, Shepard, I do not think it likely she will send anybody to greet me. She must know by now that Mjitch has fallen. She will therefore expect me, but... not with a show of force.'

'I see. Thank you. That simplifies things a little.' 

Thane nodded and withdrew from the spotlight. Miranda had been fidgeting, and Shepard turned to her.

'I'm a little uneasy about how we're going about this. You're suggesting we drop out of the relay, beetle across to Relic, dock with this station and expect her to just be there?'

'Do you have any ideas?'

'Korlus.'

There was a wave of discontent amongst the team. 'Oh god Miranda you can't be serious!' protested Jacob. 'I was hoping to never set foot on that varren-infested pile of garbage ever again!'

'I'm sceptical,' admitted Shepard, biting back her own retort along similar lines. 'But go on.'

'We know the Blue Suns have a significant presence there. Judging by the comm buoy data, it's highly likely that Mjitch's instructions came via the planet,' reasoned Miranda. 'So if we drop by there first we have a chance to hack their system and recover a full copy of that contract. Presumably the missing information will be intact, like payment details and a contact in case of problems. Then we run that data, sneak out to First Lake or Second Land or whatever, and surprise this Natai by showing up on her doorstep.'

'You're actually starting to convince me,' mused Shepard. 'And... heheh. I'm beginning to have a ridiculous idea that might make it even simpler...'

'Nothing I love more than a well-implemented ridiculous idea,' commented Garrus, edging forwards on his seat. 'This sounds like it could be fun.'

* * *

The shuttle touched down in a rare open space amid the heaps of debris, piled into mountains of scrap metal and plastic. Shepard, Kasumi and Jack climbed out and armed themselves. Miranda and Garrus had agreed to hold back in the shuttle and wait; meanwhile the human was masked up, armed with a couple of cans of paint and some card, and was preparing to stencil a new paint job onto the turian's old blue armour.

Shepard's idea complimented Miranda's plan. It was simple, and ridiculous. Before setting off, every member of her team had used her traditional private talk with them to express this, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Jacob had apparently once read an e-comic in which something similar happened. Thane had been incredulous and worried, instantly realising the number of things which could go horribly wrong, though he was pleased about the subterfuge. Tali wished the Blue Suns included quarians so she could go along. Kasumi had promised to take pictures. Mordin had cheerfully told her of the human he’d once had to scrape out from the inside of a crushed Blue Suns suit on Omega after badly-replaced seals failed in vacuum. And Garrus had almost kissed her. 

She and her squad began navigating the complex maze of pathways through the trash. Commotion from up ahead pulled them up short, and they edged forwards towards a clearing in the scrap. A freelance krogan and five mercenaries were huddled around something on the ground and seemed to be in debate about their next move. Shepard smiled. 'Almost perfect... Kasumi and I will take out the krogan. Jack, I need you to keep the mercs from getting to us, but do not damage them. Do you understand?'

'… ugh. Fine. Bitches won't know what's hitting them.'

'Kasumi, if you keep him on his toes I’ll concentrate on doing damage. If he gets too close I'll Charge him down, then we retreat a bit and try again. And at all costs keep him off Jack.'

'Sure. This should be fun. I’ve never tried to dance with a krogan before.'

Shepard directed them into position, Kasumi at the corner, Jack behind a compacted slab of junk, herself next to Jack. A memory from her previous visit to the planet leapt back into her head with teeth and claws. 'Ah, Jack, you're also on varren duty. Take the little bastards down before they get to us. If we're distracted while dealing with the krogan, that could all go south very quickly...' She activated incendiary ammo. 'Ready... Go!'

Kasumi had anticipated her, lobbing a flashbang into the centre of the group so that it exploded as Jack stormed out into battle. Shepard managed to duck her head to avoid the worst of the glare, as a burst of Locust fire exited Kasumi’s gun with a chirrup and rattled against the krogan’s shields, to the accompaniment of the thief’s light, mocking voice. 'Hey tough guy. Come here often?'

A roar proclaimed that the krogan’s attention had been thoroughly attracted. Kasumi poured the rest of her clip into his shields, breaking through to the armour, and began to skip backwards. 'Uh Shep, little help? He’s got two left feet and they’re both running this way.'

Shepard burst out from her cover and began blasting shot after shot into the krogan’s armour. The krogan switched focus to her, returning fire with a battered Katana. Her Barrier began to fail under the strain, and the krogan began to gear up for a charge. Kasumi made an "Uh oh" noise and vanished. Shepard backed into the slab she had been crouching behind, and kicked off into a biotic Charge of her own. She crashed into the krogan, gathered what remained of her Barrier with her next in breath, and recklessly slammed it down into a Nova, knocking them both facedown to the ground. Pain ignited in her neck and shoulders. 'Uhhnnn… Ow...'

Kasumi reappeared from her cloak and unloaded her Carnifax into the krogan’s back, not giving him time to redeploy his shield. The final assault was enough, and he slumped down with an oddly soft noise. Shepard accepted Kasumi’s hand, and hauled herself to her feet. 'Well! That could have gone worse.'

Kasumi tipped her head at her, probably raising her eyebrows in the shadow of her hood. 'I see why you don’t dance,' she said seriously.

'Hey. I dance.'

'Su-ure. And that krogan was a ballerina.'

Meanwhile Jack had her hands full, releasing Shockwave after Shockwave to keep the mercs on their knees and Pulling three furious varren in all directions. As soon as the krogan went down she cried out and sent a massive spherical Shockwave bursting from her hands. The ground rippled, grey dust rising from the metallic residue on the ground, and the five mercenaries went shooting off in all directions, slamming into the piles of junk and slumping, some dead, some just concussed. Kasumi and Shepard, caught in the sphere, were thrown backwards. Shepard slid a few feet and banged into the slab of junk she had been using as cover, falling to the ground again in a thud of armour and pain, and Kasumi was blown clear off her feet, though she recovered in mid-air and somehow managed to stick her landing on the side of a mountain of junk. In the following silence, something heavy dislodged itself and tumbled down into the dust.

The biotic looked up, breathing heavily and grinning. 'I'm finishing the bastards.' She stood and stalked off in the direction of the nearest groaning mercenary.

Shepard had been about to deny her on principle, but the plan required total secrecy. 'I can't believe I'm saying this, but don't spoil the uniforms.'

'Fuck you!'

Shepard tilted her head awkwardly and picked herself up again from the ground, using the slab for support. Kasumi had recovered faster and was already stripping a corpse. Jack had killed one mercenary and now moved on to another, stamping on the neck of a prone varren along the way. It died horribly, with a sharp, panicked, gurgling yelp. Shepard felt intensely glad Thane wasn't here to see this slaughter. For a moment she wished there was someone she felt she could pray to.

'Good job. Jack, thank you, good job on the control.'

'Spare me... bitch... Anyway, fucking... worth it for the... satisfaction now. Hgm!' Jack answered between biotically-charged punches, the last rupturing the mercenary's oesophagus. Blood and bubbles fizzed out of the opening.

Kasumi turned away, her lips twisting in disgust. 'Still. Better them than us, right?'

'Yeah. Right. Jack when you're... finished... help us strip the bodies. We need four complete suits of armour. As Jacob said, disguise always works in comic books. Let's just hope these mercs are as stupid as they are in the vids…'

*


End file.
